Game of the Year.....for me anyway!

 When I played Zelda: Twilight Princess last year I came to a sad realization. About half way in it dawned on me that in all my years as a gamer I had essentially been playing the same Zelda game over and over. I guess I'd known it before then but this time it left a bad taste in my mouth.

     Just before inserting the the disc for Super Mario Galaxy the same fear set in. What if this was just going to be another rehashing of the same old Mario mechanic. At first it felt a little bit like that. All the set pieces are intact. Collect a certain number of starts to carry on to the next level, the princess is missing and its up to you to save her. Bowser is an evil prick who insists that this time he's actually come up with a way to defeat you this time with turtles and goombas. It all seems so familiar and then you start playing.

     The single greatest thing you can say about Super Mario Galaxy is that every other time you end up in a new world you're doing something different. It starts you off simple enough with the basic jumping and stomping but before long your holding the wii remote up right to balance on a ball to roll around the level, or you're in a 2D world where the gravity changes from section to section, or you're floating through space using the controller to act as a sort of grappling hook to propel you from star to star along the level.  It goes on and on changing from level to level. Just when you think the game has run out of tricks you get dropped into another level and find yourself doing something completely different yet again.

     So just in case you haven't figured it out Super Mario Galaxy is my game of the year!